Beliefs
Are you bound by your beliefs?
Do they stop you from moving forward in your life or are you comforted by the certainty they give you? If someone challenges a belief you have, do you feel the need to defend it? When I was a child I believed that my stuffed animals were real and looked after them as if they were, including making space for them in my bed each night. Very soon there was not too much space left for me. I would fight with my parents that my teddy bears needed sleep too! My parents who respected my belief never argued that the stuffed toys were not real ( thanks Mum and Dad) instead they negotiated that the toys knew I needed to sleep and that unlike me could sleep sitting up on the shelf. Because the bear told Dad… Sometimes we hold beliefs that may not be true, friends and family may even corroborate our beliefs for many reasons. To placate us, because they love us or because they respect us. A belief that is not true is not always supported for sinister reasons. I don’t think believing my teddy bears were real was a harmful belief in fact it enhanced my childhood and as an only child, at the time, taught me to think of the needs of others. As I got older I realised that my furry friends were full of sawdust and that the only thing that kept them alive was my belief in them.
My question is, what beliefs are you keeping that may not be true for you anymore? Are they ‘your’ beliefs? Or are they beliefs you have adopted from your family, friends or even the collective, our society? A belief is a thought that you have thought enough times it becomes part of your truth and perspective, the way in which you view the world. The world is still growing collectively, less than a hundred years ago we were fully engaged in a world war that lead to a second, women could not vote, if you were black you had less rights than everyone else and we advertised images of how cool it was to smoke cigarettes. You are free to believe what you choose even if it is not what everyone else believes.
As yet there is no thought police and although media and the madding crowd may have reached a consensus about what is true and not true you still get to decide if it is true for you.
Your truth is your own, it is moulded by what you believe.
So be brave and believe the most wonderful things you can imagine, you may just change the world!
A few amazing people who had beliefs that did not match everyone’s else’s at the time.
Martin Luther King The Wright Brothers Christopher Columbus Nikola Tesla Helen Keller MIchelangelo Albert Einstein Lewis Carroll Charlie Chaplin Joan of Arc Plato Jesus
